Step One

Our Non-Emotional Lil Jackers

And so I am here.  Step one, mission completed.  I have successfully made it to phase two in North Carolina.  That consisted of saying goodbye to my job, my friends, my roommate, and my dog.  I miss the little Jackers, although I would venture a guess that our non-emotional dog does not miss me too much, but I digress.  I spent three days in the car with my parents and after 1.5 books and a lot of Fox radio we are here.

I had my first big breakdown tonight realizing I had left everything of my past behind.  I was waiting, anticipating that the tears would come sooner than they did.  But I guess tonight is the night, I have full realization that there is no turning back.  I have made decisions that thus far I am happy with, just learning to accept them.

One thing I am not learning to accept are the HUGE insects that reside here in North Carolina.  It is funny after living in Phoenix for four and a half years I never encountered a rattle snake (thank you know who) or even a scorpion, not to mention very few cockroaches, but it has been less than five hours in the deep South and I have already transported rooms because of what I think is a hornets nest upstairs.  Once I got down stairs I cleaned up several grasshoppers, although I just had to literally pause from typing that sentence to get up, out of bed to slam dance something with six legs.  Wow this just keeps getting better, the price you pay for living in the smoky mountains.  I read a frightening statistic that the average human eats like 14 bugs a  year inadvertently.  I am no Andrew Zimmern and I am not okay with that!

My Going Away Present to my Rent-A-Car Career

I am getting on my soapbox here for just a moment, bear with me, but being a woman in this day in age, in any day in age is tricky.  When I left my job my sister heard my boss say something to his boss "does she just want an adventure?"  And then I heard another boss said to a friend, "I have seen girls chase boys before and 99.9% of the time it does not work out."  The first question I get from everyone is "Oh my gosh are you engaged?!"  And then they check my left hand expectingly.  No, I am not engaged, yes I want to have an adventure, and I am following a boy, sort of.  I am doing this because I always expected that I would do something with my life.  And renting cars in Mesa, Arizona, just didn't qualify as "something."  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  In fact in the past week since I have left my job I have contacted someone in one way or another to get numbers, find out stats, and just check in.  I am deranged, or worse, even though I quit, I really actually did care.  Do care.  I do not know.  But I want to do something.  I want my Hollywood Ending.  Eric used to always tell me "big risk, big reward," although at the time he was taking the risk and I was being left.  And now I am taking the risk, a big one, a huge crazy risk, and I do not know what will happen.  I do not know how to totally handle it all, but at the end of the day, I want to say that I did it.  I lived.

And I will, although right now all I can say is I am unemployed and living with my parents...and some really big bugs.